SMS Pro Aviation Safety Software Blog 4 Airlines & Airports

4 I’s of the Issue Management Life Cycle in Aviation SMS

What the Issue Management Life Cycle Is

The life cycle of hazard and risk occurrence (including other types of occurrences) encompasses the entirety of an adverse event to final consequences.

The process that follows the hazard/risk occurrence life cycle is the issue management life cycle.

The issue management life cycle includes all the steps management takes from identifying an issue to fixing the issue (and beyond this, monitoring the fix). Various aviation compliance agencies account for this life cycle with various names, such as the FAA’s Safety Assurance process.

However, these processes account for much more than just the issue management life cycle, as they include monitoring and review activities. The issue management life cycle is concerned with what happens between;

Ingesting issues; and

Implementing changes.

The four general stages of the issue management life cycle are:

Ingest an issue through various hazard reporting methods;

Investigate the causes of the issue, such as the root causes and Human Factors;

Identify how to fix the causes of this problem through detection, prevention, and/or correction; and

Implement changes that fix causes via corrective actions.

Here is a more detailed look at each of these stages.

SMS Ingest Reports Via Hazard Reporting Process

Ingesting issues is the basis of issue management. Without issue reporting, there is nothing for managers to manage. Therefore, ingesting is critical to the continued improvement of SMS. The extent and quality of issue ingestion depends largely upon hazard reporting culture.

Human Factors that contributed positively/negatively to the outcome; and

If applicable, the adverse events and consequences that resulted from the hazard occurrence.

An appendage to investigating the issue is assessing the issue, which necessarily depends on investigating all aspects of the issues.

Identify How to Fix the Problem

Once an issue has been investigated, managers need to figure out how to fix the problem. This involves taking all findings from the investigation and highlighting the primary elements that negatively affected the problem.

This involves usually:

Trying to fix the root causes with risk controls in order to prevent hazard occurrence; and/or

Reinforcing risk controls to mitigate the threat(s) once the hazard has occurred, and therefore prevent risk occurrence(s).

Once the main problem areas are identified, managers need to formulate a plan to fix these main problem areas by:

Figuring out a way to detect the problem in the future;

Figuring out how to correct the problem so it’s likelihood of happening again is much reduced; and/or